


By Chance

by huntuer (tuffbeifong)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Canon Compliant, F/F, well it is if you're fuzzy on their individual timelines
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-22
Updated: 2014-10-22
Packaged: 2018-02-22 03:40:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2493119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tuffbeifong/pseuds/huntuer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anna Milton is losing herself to the voices playing in her mind: as she listens, her paintbrush brings to life the dark and terrible scenes of the war that no one knows is coming. To be so blissfully ignorant. <br/>But in the fogginess of Anna's mind, Jo Harvelle is the one shining ray of light and clarity that pierces through the haze and the confusion, and reminds Anna who she is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	By Chance

**Author's Note:**

> Set between 4.01 and 4.09 for Anna, and in Jo's college days. It lines up if you believe.   
> (Warnings for allusions to canonical apparent mental illness (hearing voices) on Anna's part)

The first time they met was by accident. 

Anna had stepped into the hall to clear her head: lately, it was full of voices she couldn’t explain, voices she was afraid of and tried to ignore. She looked down the hall to see a blonde girl in a leather jacket peering confusedly into the studio doorway, staring in confusion at a paper clutched in her hand.

“Looking for a class?” Anna called out, trying to sound helpful. 

“Uh, yeah,” the girl said. Her voice was tense, not unfriendly but certainly uncomfortable. “But it’s looking like I’m in the wrong place.”

“What are you looking for?” 

“Some god-awful thing called ‘Politics in Modern Literature,’” the girl’s voice was subtly mocking, yet exhausted. There was a sort of honesty to it that pierced through the fog in Anna’s mind and pulled at the corner of her mouth, making her want to laugh.

“Are you supposed to be in Brickson Hall, or Brickson Center?”

The blonde’s eyebrows shot up as she looked down at her schedule. “I am…an idiot,” she said slowly, already turning on her heel to dash back down the stairs, and try and make it across campus before 11:30. But as she swung the stairwell door open, she looked back and flashed Anna a broad smile. “Thanks, Red. I’ll see you around?”

She posed it as a question, rather than a farewell, and Anna found herself nodding in reply.

* * *

The second time their paths crossed was a coincidence. 

Anna was walking home to her apartment. Time had escaped her as she worked in the studio: her paintings were getting bigger, more confusing. She found herself lost in them more often than not, and her sense of time was escaping her. 

Even as she walked home, down the brightly lit crowded main street, she was lost in the chatter in her mind, utterly unaware of her surroundings. Until a hand grabbed her wrist, and a voice made it through the fog and the echoey voices in her mind. “Hey, Red!”

She wrenched her hand back, turning in shock to find the blonde, from the first week of class. 

“I’m sorry,” the girl said, looking horrified. “I didn’t mean to…grab you like that, I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t know your name.”

“It’s okay,” she said quickly, “I’m Anna. Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” the girl said, climbing gracefully over the short fence separating the sidewalk from the terrace of the bar she’d been at. “I’m Jo.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” Anna said, forcing a smile. 

“Doesn’t look so nice,” Jo said, frowning. That brought out a real smile: as her world grew more confusing, it was even more refreshing than ever before to hear that brutal honesty. 

“It is nice to meet you. I just…there’s a lot on my mind lately.” 

Jo nodded, looking at her thoughtfully. “Can I buy you a drink?”

“No, it’s ok, I really need to get home.” Looking at the other girl, glowing in neon lights from the bar windows, Anna regretted the words before she’d even finished speaking. 

Jo looked a little disappointed, but she didn’t push it. “Well, if you ever change your mind, let me know. See you around?”

Again, Anna nodded. 

* * *

The third time they met was fate. 

Anna knew it as soon as her eyes met those familiar brown ones. Rain was coming down in sheets, and she was clutching her sketchbook to her chest, hunched over and soaking wet. She’d ducked into the doorway of a campus building, hiding under the awning and peering up at the angry gray sky. And after she shook the worst of the water off her sketchpad and turned, she was met with a soft smirk on a familiar face. 

“We really must stop meeting like this,” Jo said, her voice low and mockingly dramatic. 

Anna didn’t speak for a moment: it was harder and harder, as the voices in her mind took over, distracted her. But as she looked in Jo’s warm brown eyes, she pushed the voices to the background, and moved closer to the other girl. 

There was something about Jo that Anna hadn’t been able to get out of her mind. Her patient expression, her gold hair: she’d appeared in Anna’s paintings, her face dappled in colored light and growing more abstracted with each new canvas. Lately, it seemed as if each new painting was darker and more terrible than the last, the scenes growing angrier and more confusing, changing in tandem with the conversations playing non-stop inside her head. 

A war was coming: a war she didn’t understand, a war she should have nothing to do with. This was something she had never asked for. 

And right now, looking at Jo, Anna stepped forward. Because in the dark of her confusion, making her own choice and doing something for herself felt right. Jo felt right. 


End file.
